silva

CULTURAL
CAPITAL AND
VISUAL ARTS
Elizabeth Silva
e.b.silva@open.ac.uk
Cultural Capital and Social
Exclusion: A critical
investigation
ESRC funded
Mar 2003 Mar 2006
Tony Bennett, Mike Savage,
Elizabeth Silva and Alan Warde
Web site address for CCSE
• Details and some publication, as well as
publication list can be found at:
• http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/cultu
ral-capital-and-social-exclusion/
the project:
1. our research questions
2. our methods, and some procedures,
of investigation
3. some of our analytical procedures in
connection to these methods and
procedures
• 1. to assess whether we can detect cultural
capital in contemporary Britain. If so, what
form does it take?
• 2. to consider whether different cultural
fields are explored along similar principles. If
so, what is the nature of these similarities?
• 3. to what extent we can see a process of
socio-cultural reproduction in existence in
contemporary Britain. If so, how ‘open’ are
the cultural hierarchies to outsiders and the
upwardly mobile?
Focus groups
• 25 focus-group discussions
between 4 and 8 participants per group, involving a total of
143 participants, including 74 women and 69 men.
• between March and July 2003
• a diversity of social backgrounds: middle-class and
working-class groups - African-Caribbean, Indian,
Pakistani and white - different groups of specific
occupational statuses - professionals (male and female),
managers, landowners and farm managers, agricultural
workers, skilled and unskilled workers, and the
unemployed – class, age, gays and lesbians
• 6 areas in the UK
The survey
• November 2003 and March 2004
• applied to a nationwide representative
sample of adults (18+) resident in Britain
• 1,781 respondent: main sample 1564,
ethnic boost sample 227 (Indian, Pakistani
and African-Caribbean)
• questions asked – grouped under 29
different headings
Household interviews + observation
• 44 - Sep 2004 and Mar 2005 - 28 survey respondents, 2
from focus groups + partners = 14 partnered
interviewees.
• theoretical sample: (i) cultural capital composition, (ii)
the presence/absence of dependent children, (iii)
geographical location, (iv) division between ‘white’ and
minority ethnic composition and (v) types of households
• 7 themes: (1) housing, (2) kind of job/work, (3) cultural
capital and leisure activities in selected fields, (4)
involvement in household activities, (5) ideals of style/
appearance and desire for social position, (6) visual
exploration of taste, (7) embarrassing situation
• observation and participation notes - location,
housing, garden, decoration, collections, furniture, dress
and comportment + rapport
Elite interviews
• April and July 2005
• eleven people - positions of particular
prominence in business, politics, or other
professions
• Template based on the household partner
interview + observation and participation
notes
Multiple Correspondence Analysis
• plotting people’s cultural preferences in
Euclidian space
• graphically represent an unusually wide
range of cultural tastes and practices
• method is ‘inductive’ and ‘descriptive’ and
does not presuppose any particular
ordering of practices will be found
MCA – highlights:
• the cultural maps we produce do not
smuggle assumptions about the social
determinants of taste into them
• once we have constructed our cultural
map, we are able to superimpose social
categories onto it
• we can also locate every single individual
in our survey uniquely - we can link our
qualitative interviews to the cultural map
MCA - axes
• the first axis differentiates on the basis of
participation
• the second axis distinguishes
‘contemporary/commercial’ from
‘established’ cultural tastes
• the third axis distinguishes types of likes
and dislikes for mediatised representations
of ‘outwards’ pursuits from ’inwards’ ones
• the fourth axis distinguishes ‘voracious’
from ‘moderate’ cultural users
Axis 1(λ1=0.1626): Cultural Engagement: involvement and
disengagement
Black: participation modalities
Red: taste modalities
Axis 2 (λ2=0.1180): Contemporary Taste : the established and the
emergent
Black: participation modalities
Red: taste modalities
Axis 3 (λ3=0.0727): Vicarious Sympathies : hard and soft
Black: participation modalities
Red: taste modalities
Bold: modalities contributing most to variance on the axis (>2)
Axis 4: (λ2=0.0629) Cultural Enthusiasm: moderation and voraciousness
Black: participation modalities
Red: taste modalities
MCA - patterns
• Firstly, we can see that the four figures do
allow us to pull out certain homologies
between the fields.
• Secondly, what do we make of the fact
that the prime division, on our first axis,
relates to issues of participation?
• Thirdly, our data suggest significant
differences in the organization of British
contemporary cultural life from that
identified by Bourdieu.
Visual Art
• In the MCA, visual art is the second most
dominant field on axis 1 and by far the greatest
contributor to axis 4.
• . The intensity of participation in visual art is
highly relevant for social position, as shown by
the levels of attendance (and of non-attendance)
at art galleries and museums by different groups
of people, together with indicators of ownership
of original and high quality reproductions of art
works, all of which were included as modalities
in the MCA.
Selected cultural activities by three social classes (percentage for each class)
Professional Intermediate Working All
class class class
More than 5 hours TV 8 22 33 24
per weekday
Once a year or less to 33 52 62 53
cinema
Never go to musicals 19 35 60 31
Read no books last 8 14 27 19
year
Sometimes goes to 10 4 3 5
opera
Sometimes goes to 22 12 7 12
orchestral concerts
Never goes to 42 64 80 67
orchestral concerts
Sometimes goes to 21 20 23 22
nightclubs
Never go to museums 15 33 50 39
Never goes to art 30 52 69. 55
galleries
Goes to pub at least 29 29 30 29
once a week
Soap operas favourite 10 16 22 17
TV programmes
News/current affairs 24 19 14 18
favourite TV
programme
• Margaret: …if I put that boat picture up
there, like that wouldn’t do anything for my
kitchen... I’m sort of trying to get things
that would suit my kitchen you know and
that does… you know, you have – […] It
took me about three or four days to get
those pictures for in here [pointing to the
wall]. Do you know what I mean, I just
didn’t go out and get the first thing that I
saw.
• Beverley: … I’m not overly keen on modern art, I mean my
husband, my current husband is a fully trained artist at university so
we have a lot of paintings at home.
• Interviewer: That he did or he buys?
• Beverley: That he did. I buy paintings -
• Interviewer: You do, what sort of painting does he do? What sort of
style?
• Beverley: He prefers to do watercolours but he can do anything
…at various times people have… commissioned him to do
something, we have all kinds of different things in the house.
• Interviewer: And what sort of paintings do you buy?
• Beverley: I have some paintings that I buy, a chap called [name]-
..a-u-h-m, he lives locally but… he sells well all over the UK and he’s
a friend of ours… I obviously like the paintings but that’s the other
reason why we’ve bought them.
• Interviewer: What’s his style?
• Beverley: His style is naive.
• […]
• Interviewer: Is he the only one or is there any other -
• Beverley: …My brother who died was very artistic as well and I
have some of his work… that was exhibited. […]- we also have a
good friend, [name] […] who’s a sculptor so we have some of her
wall hangings,… as well.
• Cynthia: A great friend who was in the art
world, …she was a 19th century expert
and through her, I got to like [name]…
was… ‘My God!’, and we’ve got one
picture of his and that has gone up mad in
value as you can imagine, wonderful. […]
But the ones I really really like, Turner [...]
he was actually a friend of my father’s and
I was taken to see his studios and things
like that and I’ve got quite a lot of not
original [inaudible] tiny little thing when he
scribbled something to my father, but
that’s about all.
some conclusions
• understand the relationship between the
structure of taste, knowledge and participation in
visual art
• individuals positioned predominantly according
to possession of cultural capital -- inflections
linked to demographic [divisions of gender, age
and ethnicity] and biographical patterns
• connections between class and cultural practice
where the more educated and those in higher
occupations prevail
• new? - involvement of women and of younger
members of ethnic minorities
More Conclusions
• Class matters.
• Class society continues to transmit privilege
across generations.
• Divisions between professional, intermediate
and working class.
• Educational qualifications homogenise the
professional class.
• Cultural capital as basis of social cohesion
within professional class?
• No simple distinction between high and
popular culture but attendance at Arts
performances continues to show hierarchical
class gradient.